


Unsteady, Fast

by Lilliburlero



Category: Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: Bisexuality, Canon Het Relationship, Canonical Holy Shewings, Canonically Dead Characters Are Dead, Crossover Pairings, Deliberate Anachronism, Domestic Violence, F/M, Hearing the Chimes at Midnight, Historical, Homophobia, Implied Fluellen, M/M, Medieval, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, Mysticism, Original Character(s), Post canon, Pregnancy, Sex Work, Sexism, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:24:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God knows, whether those that bal out the ruines of thy linnen shall inherite his kingdom: but the Midwives say, the children are not in the fault whereupon the world increases, and kinreds are mightily strengthened. ―<i>The second part of Henrie the fourth </i>, act II, scene ii</p><p>Is it not strange, that Desire should so many yeeres out-liue performance? ―<i>The second part of Henrie the fourth,</i> act II, scene iv</p><p>Fifteenth-century parlour farce, featuring novelty handkerchiefs and literal chimes at midnight.</p><p>Content advisory: homophobic and sexist slurs, references to violence, sex work, one instance of domestic abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsteady, Fast

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [He Which Hath No Stomach To This Fight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149) by [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2). 



> An exchange with angevin2 about writing Hal/Poins without Angst contributed to this, and also gave me the notion that it would be fun to set Margery Kempe loose in the world of the histories. I haven't managed the latter yet (nor complete angstlessness for that matter), but there is a nod to it here. Many thanks.
> 
> Thanks, sack and sugar to DW for trying to sort out out my appalling Frangloop; any remaining errors are my own.

Mélisande could not be discouraged from sleeping like this, clinging to him, her head all but in his oxter, both her legs wound round his right. It was well and good in the field, comforting even, but they had a bed now. They had two, in fact, one in each of the chambers flanking a comfortable upstairs sitting room. It was the best apartment in the house, which, located as it was on a street full of butcher’s shops, would probably never be salubrious. The new landlord, an energetic and ambitious nephew of the slatternly old proprietor, had brought with him the obsequiously bumptious feel of a shop self-consciously on the up. But it was agreeable and cheap enough a place to wait out the tedious winter weeks or months until campaigning began again, or (as Mélisande hoped and Nick dreaded) Sir John Cornwaille called him north to Ampthill to serve there. They lived easy and slack on Nick’s heroic reputation: each morning, Francis or William would bring their late breakfast and a half-gallon of moderately undrinkable wine. Mélisande teased Francis something awful; Nick thought it was wrong of her, the man was simple. He tried to say why it was that it was wrong, but he didn’t quite have the French for it, and Mélisande, though she was absorbing English like a sponge in conversation with the landlord’s wife, exercised her prerogative of selective incomprehension freely, and flatly refused to speak English to Nick with the excuse that no-one else understood what she would call French at all. 

Not an oblivious man, Nick noticed that the private sitting rooms of the Boar’s Head were crammed with half-gentlemen, all of whom had more French than he, albeit of the school of Stratford-at-Bowe. Their delight when they discovered their accommodation happened to be shared by one of the _happy few_ , the authenticity of whose anecdotes was evident from their inarticulacy and tedium and the demure presence of his unequivocally French wife, was immoderate. Thrilled at first, Nick got bored with it after a while, and refused to come down. Mélisande pouted and insisted, he said jealous and unworthy words, slammed the door and spent the night, as he felt he ought, dicing in the public bar and winning more than he thought plausible from some Kentishmen. He might be living a soft life now, but he hadn’t _lost it_ , so he cut his—winnings, brusquely declined to do the sporting thing and play them again on the morrow, there were advantages to not being a gentleman, after all, and stumbled upstairs to her admission that the preferential rent was contingent on a certain volume of battlefield anecdote and girlish Gallic charm disbursed. Nick’s relieved laughter provoked the further confession that Mélisande garnered twopence in every shilling received in tips from those sitting rooms they attended, which he was a deal less happy about, he wasn’t a _menagerie beast_ , and did that make a skinny French chit his keeper? but he had disarmed himself and could not muster protest. Seeing his smile fade, Mélisande promised to begin negotiations for twopence ha’penny immediately after breakfast. 

On reflection, Nick thought he could see the merit in Mélisande’s argument: after all, he had never agreed to death by bolt or poleaxe or pious noose or ubiquitous shitting sickness, he’d been forced to it, and by God’s grace he’d survived Soissons and Harfleur and Agincourt altogether. It must be right that he profited now, in a manner a little more immediate and glinting silver than Sir John’s promise of a grant of land some time in the indeterminate future when all was well, Henry Five of England was Henri Deux of France and the goddamned Exchequer paid Sir John what Sir John was owed, by Our Lady’s sweet round arse. What was Nick doing, after all, other than telling the stories that he’d tell anyway for beer, or nothing, or a comradely hug from one of the other seven thousand-odd who’d been there on ††Crispin & Crispianian? (He knew an impostor as if by the smell, and his cold contempt was, he reckoned, worse than a beating, which didn’t stop him administering the occasional beating.) And while Nick didn’t really think it was right that Mélisande, a married woman, _his_ married woman, sat about in that shoulderless frock and gauzy headpiece in an all-but public place, it would sound stark crazy to object to her graciously granting a handshake or a cheek-kiss when then, in that life before, she’d cowered naked in attics and under thorn-bushes escaping rapists and murderers, and he hadn’t exactly, on the thorny second occasion at least, been around to help.

As to his saints, he hadn’t heard from them since that October day and to be honest, he wasn’t much bothered. He was richer than he’d ever been, he had prospects, his wife was awkwardly tangled round his chest and leg, he had a hard-on (though he knew from the warm pressure behind it it was just a piss-stand, so he would have to wriggle out of the covers to relieve it before he could fuck her), St Clement’s was clanging Prime, and it was his name-day. Mélisande murmured and shifted; he thought it might be an apt occasion for that piss and he was kneeling over the po shaking himself when she lay her chin on the edge of the bed and trilled,

― _Bonne fête!_

She gave him half a dozen squares of linen, finely worked in grey and bright blue thread, which latter must have cost all the twopences he hadn’t realised he was earning.

―They’re mighty fine work, sweeting, he said stubbornly (in English), unable to conceal deep puzzlement.

― _Les hameçons, là―c’est un jeu de mots_ ―

―I get it, aye, but―but, what _are_ they? Not the hooks. The things.

― _Les mouchoirs._

―Pardon?

French seeming inadequate to the volume of amused contempt required, she pronounced laboriously, ―They are―there is not the word. For blowing your nose. She playfully brushed the relevant organ.

Nick did not try to keep the incredulity and disgust from his face.

― _Aussi pour autres choses. Les gentilshommes_ ―

―I’m no bastard gentleman and I won’t let you try and make me one.

Though a gentleman’s bastard was exactly what he was, he reflected moodily, which meant that he didn’t catch Mélisande’s volley of―encouraging disparagement, he supposed it was. It didn’t matter, he’d heard it all before, and he always said the same thing in reply, which amounted to,

―I’m no bastard gentleman and I won’t let you try and make me one. I’m an archer, sweeting, an _archer_. Sometimes I think you don’t know what that means, how low it is, even if you did choose―I’m the scum that wins their wars for them. Gentlemen might want to carry their snot around in their sleeves on a special rag, and they might not even laugh if their friends do it. But if I did it I’d be the laughing stock of the―God’s bones, Méli, I’m an archer, but I’m not just an archer, I’m a centenar now. It’s my twenty-first name day―

― _Vingt-troisième._

―Well, damn, close enough―how do you know, anyway?

― _Tu m’a dit l’année dernière. Mais peut-être mon petit_ archer _avait menti. ___

―No, all right, twenty-third. How old are you, anyway, bet you don’t―

― _Dix-huit._ A trim twitter.

―I know that, he said, meaning he didn’t, and he was surprised, though glad, that she had not been younger when he’d first had her, on the road to Calais. It had never occurred to him to ask, out there, where there was so much horror, but he did not want to think himself the sort of man who would exploit a mere child.

―Look, I mean, anyone, anyone in the whole bastard army could have one of those things in his sleeve―where do you keep them, anyway? except a blasted centenar. No-one cares what the scum do to amuse themselves, blow their noses into their own arses, they could and nobody would―and the gentlemen are a law unto their own―but for me it matters, everything matters―you’ve got to be above them but one of them still, or they won’t―you can’t―you’ve seen― 

―I think you are making a―rawther―dretful―fuss about some little square of cloth, Nicholas.

―Oh, sod you.

She turned pale grey and scrambled for the bottom of the bed; he hadn’t pushed the po back under, luckily as it happened, because she puked into it, a self-contained noiseless hurl, not like the costive retching of illness or the miserable, unpredictable cataracts of intoxication. He waited until she was quite finished, got dressed and went downstairs.

*

Mélisande was with child at last. She puked a lot. Not quite as bad as some, who puked themselves literally to death, but she was losing weight when she should be gaining it, and she didn’t have any spare to start with. The hostess had a wealth of gruesome pregnancy stories with which she favoured Nick whenever he looked idle, usually as a prelude to requesting something of his archer’s chest and arms: barrels, firewood. They’d come here as all but gentlefolk, he thought, and ended up as glorified choppers of wood and drawers of water. 

Engaged upon one of these demeaning chores, Nick remembered suddenly and uncomfortably that Nell Snoball had been visibly pregnant when he’d left for France―he didn’t know it was his, of course, but she’d been married to Bill without a flutter for three years before that summer when they’d met most afternoons down between Shortmead byre and the honeysuckle trellis―he used to think of it, sometimes, when he was still with Slayton’s company, what it would be like to come back to a little black-headed Snoball, fractionally concerned for the consequences, but mostly shamefully self-satisfied at wiping the old bollocks’s eye, then the more ashamed because he knew what it was to have your father’s baleful eyes on you, knowing where that height, that saturnine colouring, came from. But old Snoball wouldn’t be back, not until the crack of doom. Nell would’ve looked after herself, he comforted himself, she was that sort. If she’d survived the birth.

Christmas came and went. Mélisande still puked, but less, and she started to round out so that she looked almost like a normal woman instead of _a bit of leftover French lath_ (the coiner of this phrase was rendered incapable of further oratory by a broken jaw, though the veracity of the sentiment was universally acknowledged, even by Nick, truth be told). Nick insisted on spending the night in the smaller of the two rooms and beds, and woke with Mélisande wrapped round his thighs and arse as ever, and it was hell of a job not to lift her up onto his aching stiff prick, or turn her about and push it into her as he cupped the new curves of her breasts and belly. But he didn’t, and he didn’t go with the brittle, expensive brand of whore that the Boar’s Head seemed to specialise in, either. He’d had enough of women. He liked to drink, but he had the wrong, or the right, temperament for gaming―if he won, he felt it devilish luck, if he lost, his native curse; in neither circumstance did he feel inclination to return to the table. He liked watching the newly modish card games, but only because the pictures on the decks piqued his appetite for system and pattern; he thought the games themselves both dull and complicated.

Money began to get a bit―not tight, but nothing was coming in now. With Mélisande, Nick was an attraction; without her, just another thick-tongued, heavy-arsed soldier whose tale could be heard better embroidered at any pub in London, but they couldn’t risk her catting onto some pillock’s ridiculous padded toes. He was reluctant to move to meaner quarters, but he acknowledged that the two bedchambers were a foolish extravagance when he could not persuade Mélisande to stay in hers, so they moved downstairs to one room divided into sleeping and living space by a screen. 

The first inmate of their erstwhile apartment arrived on St Felix’s day, a man in his late thirties, a half-hand’s breadth shorter than Nick (which still left him taller than most), narrowly built, red-brown hair cropped in a decorous evocation of the unflattering vogue, nose rather hawkishly prominent, neatly trimmed beard an acknowledgement of a chin too weak to affect the clean-shaven fashion, austerely but richly dressed in a sable gown over hose the colour of thunderclouds and a doublet that of charcoal. 

Nick whistled. ―Who’s the toff? He looks as if he was got by a priest on a Royston crow.

The landlord shrugged. ―It’s the new thing with businessmen, all black. He inherited Stockton’s when the old man died. Married the daughter.

―The vintners? Christ’s prick. What’s he doing drinking here? Slumming it a bit, isn’t he?

―Not drinking. Lodging. I put him in your old room, if that’s all right with you, Hook.

―Up yours, Ralph Quickly. 

―That gentleman’s been coming here for years, old Ursula quavered confidentially from the chimneyseat. When the king was a lad they were friends and they used both to come here with―with Sir John, God rest his soul. She made the sign of the cross and her rheumy eyes watered.

―Oh, shut up, you sozzled old bitch, Ralph said affably. That was my Aunt Nelly’s fancy, he explained, she started making things up when―she got the―got ill―confused, she was. Caused us no end of trouble. Shacked up with this rough fellow, she did, complete con-man, and he turns up a few months after she died, saying they were married and he owned the place, cheek of it. Round about a fortnight before you got here, it was. I think we saw him off. Could’ve done with your muscles that afternoon. Actually, he was codding on he fought, you know―Ralph looked at his feet in a shy civilian way that made Nick want to slap him upside the jaw―with you fellows―you didn’t know him, did you, name of―

―There were loads of us. Well, there weren’t, of course, that was sort of the point. But you wouldn’t necessarily know the names of blokes who weren’t in your gang, you know, and most of the men from here were Erpingham’s, weren’t they? I know Mick Williams. I might know this chap to see. _If_ he was there.

―Mmm. What was I saying? Oh, Aunt Nell had this daft idea that the King used to come in here when he was Prince of Wales, got up to all sorts, apparently. There was one story she used to tell―amazing, the imagination she had really. You’d never have guessed, completely gaga.

―I’ve met the King, actually, Nick ventured carefully. He’s a bit of a queer customer, to be frank. It’s the sort of thing he _would_ do, come somewhere like this _incognito_.

―Incog―what’s that? 

―It’s Latin for _who in hell do you think you’re fooling?_

* 

The archer was looking at him. Everybody had at first; he was conspicuously sleek here in the public bar, but he had been explained to the slightly self-contradictory satisfaction of the company as a self-made man of fixed, unpretentious habits _and_ evidence of the establishment’s rising respectability under new management. But the archer―of course, he _might_ be a farrier who’d happened to have exchanged boots with a French nobleman who had somewhat narrower feet―but farriers didn’t usually look at you as if they were contemplating the brain behind your face and the trajectory of the bodkin head they were going to plant in it from two hundred yards, not unless they were archers as well. What a mug’s game the army was, he should know, a decade of mud and blood and shite and perpetual hock to armourers and horse-traders and, well, _vintners_ , before he got in on the supply side. Still, he liked archers. He’d had some very good times with archers.

The archer was staring at him. Back in the day, he wouldn’t have thought twice; he wouldn’t have thought once. These days, he had to be careful. On the other hand, there was nothing to stop him. It had been a brutal journey up to town; thwarted at every turn; hail, rain and snow; roadways churned into soup when they weren’t blocked, horses throwing shoes, hostelries shut or grudgingly opened, his manservant falling sick―they’d had to leave him at a monastery hospital, and he doubted he’d see Simon again in this world. He was hopeless days late; the men he was supposed to meet with papers, money and intelligence were probably long gone and he should have to follow at his own considerable expense. He had given his assistant Matthew the night off. And he was not, in fact, a man of fixed habits.

―Francis?

―Yes sir? 

―That big man between the fire and the door, the archer. Do you know him?

―Yes sir, he stops here. How’d you know he was an archer, sir?

―Sorcery. No, I don’t mean it, shh. Seriously, what else could he be, with those shoulders and over-fine boots that don’t fit him? Do you know who he serves?

―Sir John somebody―I forget, sir. His wife is―

―What?

― _French_ , sir, Francis whispered resoundingly.

―Hm. Well, fill his pot and tell him his night’s drink is paid for. Don’t tell him it’s me buying.

―Who, sir?

―The _archer _. And Francis―try not to look at me when you’re telling him.__

His last instruction proved in advance of Francis’s capacity. The potman was attached to him as victims sometimes become to their tormentors, and anxious to carry out his orders to the letter, looked so obviously _the other way_ as he relayed the message that a six-years child, let alone a man whose livelihood and life depended on accurate judgement of space and line, might have told which way he _wasn’t looking_. The man was over to him in a moment.

―Thanks very much, sir, I shan’t refuse; but I like to know whose debt I’m in.

Cheshire accent, but he didn’t need to hear him speak to know that; Nantwich or Northwich Hundred, maybe. A light, slightly ragged voice. He felt an amorous twitch, leaned back slowly and appreciatively regarded his interlocutor from looted boots to habitually, warily lowered dark head. He smiled, thinking of someone else―similar height, but almost literally half as broad―used to loftier accommodation and forever laying himself out on the beams in here. This fellow, in contrast, looked like he’d been ducking since his balls dropped. 

―No-one’s. But England is in yours.

The archer examined his face for irony, found none, and permitted himself a small puff of pride. Touching, he thought, and let the irony enter his expression.

―England sends his apologies, of course. Otherwise engaged. Negotiations with Burgundy, I’m told―the which we can try our hands at―He paused, decided to risk it. ―And our lips, also.

―Come again, sir?

He gestured towards the flagon and waved to Francis for another cup. ―Unless you _prefer_ that poor creature Quickly’s beer? Sit down―

―Nicholas―Nick Hook.

―Poins. Health, Master Hook.

He found the archer’s tale unexpectedly engaging. Ned Poins was well-informed, but he hadn’t known anyone had walked insouciant out of Soissons. Hook had all the prickly self-absorption of youth and the abrupt hesitancy of uncertain social position―qualities that would render a man of middling stature or indifferent looks contemptible, but which made a big and handsome one almost absurdly desirable―how curious that was. 

The volume of unwatered Burgundy necessary to bring nigh-on six and a half foot of English bowman to the moderate degree of uninhibited drunkenness Poins had in mind was astonishing. But Hook was compensatorily easy to flatter and pump―Ned knew all he needed by sunset, and all he wanted a cup and half later―much more and the appeal would start to wane. He didn’t want that; he was lit up with drink and the prospect of a fuck, _life_. He didn’t get enough _life_ these days, and he was easier bored than ever. With fuddled perspicacity, Nick chose that moment to realise he had spoken too much and too freely to a man whose apparent frankness was in fact circumspection. 

―What brings you here, sir, if I may ask?

―I have a house in town, but it’s shut up. I stay often in the country―my late brother’s son―a long story. I was unexpectedly called away―things went badly for me on the journey here, and I missed my appointments. You think Quickly’s shop rather insalubrious for a knight’s second son stooped to trade? I suppose it is.

―There are―nicer places.

Poins shrugged. ―I used to be a regular.

―Oh. You know, I meant to―you said―earlier―England―apologies―did you mean―I heard―in here―earlier―I expect it―never mind, just rumour― 

― _former intimate of his Majesty_ , am I right?

The archer actually blushed. Ned grinned.

―No―I never was―an intimate. Of anyone. I disappoint you, I see. I’ve no idea how it came about. My business has a number of _accounts_ with the court, naturally. But the king doesn’t see to his own casks of bastard. Poins thought better of an obvious quibble, remembering how cutting Hal could be about his more pedestrian sallies―he didn’t remember his grace’s wit being exactly scintillating either, though he’d laughed as heartily and obsequiously as any of them. ―I’m not as well-connected as you, Hook. I’ve never exchanged a word with King Henry. 

(Poins always liked it when he could manage not to lie.)

Nick swallowed visibly. ―You don’t. Disappoint me. 

_That_ Poins had not foreseen. In his amazement he let the moment slip and by the time he emerged from a bout of inward cursing Nick was talking about Hal again. He did not want to hear about Hal in all his Halishness: the gamesome freaks, the unexpected ferocity, the fits of manic piety and crude superstition, the volatile affection, the whinging about petty griefs and constraints, the ridiculous dignity he assumed when he had to drop someone inconvenient. It was equally ridiculous, Poins supposed, that he was still somehow proud that he’d managed to escape it without making too great a fool of himself―it was extraordinary enough that he’d managed to escape it in a way that didn’t involve a hempen necklace and a long dance. And it was Falstaff, in a manner of speaking, who had sprung him. Why had they been at loggerheads? Falstaff had loved Hal, and Ned had not, and he expected preferment from his friendship with him, and Ned had not, though he wouldn’t have turned it down had it come, which it did not. There had been no cause for enmity there, fellowship rather. He could even have protected Falstaff from some of it, if he hadn’t been too busy chasing kicks and following his cock. Instead, Falstaff, all unwitting, protected him. That _inane_ letter. The thought _not unwitting_ assailed him, even Falstaff must have been more literate than that, because Ned himself was more literate than that, and Ned’s education had been everything the impecunious English squirearchy usually affords a second son, only less so, and he flinched to find Nick’s cool, rough hand lying easy on his right wrist, the weatherwise one.

In a cacophony of self-recrimination, Poins realised he’d misjudged everything ever, bolting from his brother’s beatings, talk about skillet to fire, Ireland (boredom, then hunger), France (hunger, bloody violence, then more hunger, and _repeat_ ), Italy, his desertion from the free company in the midst of its messy dissolution, Grenada, intoxicating sunlight and the only love affair of his life, that hadn’t ended well, O holy God, Hal, Falstaff, enough said, marrying mannerly Margery Stockton, poor Margery, he tried not to make her suffer, but he did, and in recompense she worried about his soul, which drove him scatty, because though he could probably do with all the prayers he got, he still felt obstinately his soul was his own affair, the ongoing wretched wardship suit, pissing profit into the drains of the Court of Wards faster than he could fill their cellars but most of all the strength of the wine. The room swam, the man he’d marked as stiff but seducible rough trade was earnestly and convincingly detailing the King’s envy of his holy visions, that was Hal all right, God’s bollocks, he’d thought it had been a nod and commendatory word, not whole conversations―had _King Henry_ been trying it on? _Hal_ would have been trying it on, and had Hook taken the bait? Ned’s hastily-suppressed mental image did not omit the crown―and Pistol had just crashed through the serving hatch, followed by the oily, bubbling contents of a stockpot, which hit its presumed target, and the iron vessel itself, which thudded harmlessly short and wide, to wholly unnecessary consternation on the part of the clientele. Poins was imagining none of this, his fancy was not so vivid, as Hal had never missed an opportunity to point out. 

―Neck that, Hook, and let’s get out of here.

*

Nick had, one way or another, had some small traffic with men, but jest, bravado, the continual martial play of dominance and humiliation accounted for all of it. If it was mere relief you were after, there were always women around camps: to do it with a man meant you were proving something, probably yourself, and Nick’s stature and air of faintly sullen capability combined to spare him a lot of that. This was different; this was pleasure. He had no real idea why he had so enthusiastically consented to it―provoked it even―except he wanted pleasure, and he hadn’t had enough of it. Mélisande was anxious to please, and more intrepid than you might expect, given that she’d been cloistered as a child and released from that into a brutal world of blood and threat, from which Nick was too often her only protection. And from there somehow he’d manoeuvred himself into protecting her from his own desires, which were, after all, shameful, otherwise he would not be allowing a decayed gentleman whose Christian name he did not know to breathe wine and aniseed all over him, to graze his ear and throat with undecayed teeth, to insinuate well-kept hands under his shirt. It would be a fool thing to ask now― _excuse me, what do they call you?_ ―but he wanted the power a given name conferred, to command, to plead, to cry out.

Ludicrously, he found himself sizing Poins up as if he were about to fight him, not to―well, he wasn’t at all sure how _that_ was going to go, only that he knew he could stop it if he wished, and he didn’t wish. Poins was stronger than he looked, not that that was saying much, Nick condescended from the happy position of being able to pull a hundredweight to his ear a half-a-dozen times in the space it took a man to dash a hundred yards, and he was quick and deft, but that sort of lean agility aged hard, better to have a bit of weight behind you as your muscles declined into middle age―left-handed, the devil’s own luck, that was― 

Poins stripped off his shirt―at first glance it looked like lowering fire- and candlelight playing red and shadow over sallow skin, but it wasn’t―he wore the livery of a man at arms, the one he can’t take off: arms spattered with old defence wounds, a knotty track over his right shoulder-joint, a livid glossy pucker snaking up out of his braies. Nick made a noise like a tradesman faced with an unexpectedly tricky job and about to offer a distinctly unfavourable rate.

―God’s teeth, you do a good impression of a civilian.

―I _am_ a civilian, these six years and more. And God willing shall be one the rest of my days. You should try it. It’s very relaxing.

―Not a chance, mate. I’m going mad cooped up here, gnaw my own―leg off next. Nick reached to trace the long groin wound. ―You mind? That must have been nasty.

Poins loosened his braies and pushed them down just enough to reveal the tip of his prick. 

―Quite remarkably dishonourable too. I annoyed a lady in Spain. Don’t stop. 

Nick held his breath. This was the thing he’d heard Sir John on about once, he wished he could remember the name, the river and the little bridge you crossed with all your troops and you were committed then, no pretending you hadn’t really meant it―

― _Iacta alea est_ , Poins murmured.

Nick looked up. ―What?

―Nothing. Don’t stop.

*

It had been more deliberate than delirious, but none the worse for that. Prone to devastating tristia, Ned had early learnt to take pleasure by giving it, and never to confuse it with frenzy. He scratched and shifted, thinking of Nick’s nervous, hardy receptiveness, his mildly deflated relief at the discovery that he was not about to be asked to surrender himself, which of course had made Ned, usually no enthusiast either way, but perverse to his neatly-pared fingernails, want to fuck his arse into a raw, twitching shambles. Notwithstanding, the archer’s long, powerful thighs were as sweet a pair as he’d ever come between, bar one. 

And Nick had gone back to his wife’s bed. That was good, that was tactful. That was―disappointing. Ned believed in being honest with himself, at least. He’d never really managed to extend the principle, but he couldn’t help that; mendacity was so very general a vice, it was fatal not to join in.

He pushed aside the bedcurtain. Ugh, daylight. It hurt his eyes. There was nothing to be done for mornings: want to swap your night watch? ask Poins. Ambush at dusk or dawn? ask Poins. The idiot sort of battle where the brass havers until there’s practically no light left and then sends you in confused and ignorant? well, don’t _ask_ exactly, but he was better able to cope than most. Want to shaft Ned Poins? meet him between Prime and Sext, and he won’t even see you coming. He wasn’t sure how many people knew that. He used to be better at covering it up. It used not to _hurt_ so goddamn much. 

He rolled to the edge of the bed and swung his legs out stiffly. It was one of his bad days, throbbing right wrist, an arrow storm in his knees and shoulder, a cold furnace in his hip. He felt like one of those minatory paintings on church walls that showed Christ’s body being taken apart by people swearing on it. Nothing of him worked, except to suggest that there probably would be snow that afternoon, in England, in January, in the worst winter since last winter, which was no compensation for having to go out in it to track down men who’d probably been on the other side of the Channel for a fortnight. 

There was a tentative knock at the chamber door.

―Come in. Oh, Matt, thank Christ. I’m spavined, it’s this blasted weather. Francis was supposed to do for me, the imbecile, he’s forgotten. Could you call hot water and get the fire laid?

―Have done, on its way. And breakfast, spiced beef and this funny cheese with a sort of brown rind and small beer was all they―

―No, Jesus God, no breakfast, _please_. You wouldn’t mind, awfully, helping me on with―I know it’s not your job―beneath you. 

―Not a bit. I’ll give that shoulder a rub while I’m at it.

Matthew’s good nature was Margery’s, as was his freckled, mobile, humorous face. He was called her cousin by the family, but she, in whom no scruple, religious or social, could suppress native honesty and affection, called him what he was, _brother_. He had her tender, blunt hands, too. Ned groaned under them, close to senescent tears. 

―There was a man who wanted you, in the back passage.

Ned was glad he had an excuse to make―indeed, was already making―a variety of inarticulate noises.

―Big dark brooding chap. Gave me a look to turn milk. Maybe it’s how they make that strange cheese. No idea _why_ , never saw him before.

Ned had a fairly shrewd idea _why_ , but hoped he was wrong. ―Yes, I know who you’re on about. I’ll catch up with him later. I’ve to find where my contacts have gone, and you’re to go to the sign of the Half Moon in Southwark. Ask for Peto. He’ll hire us someone to replace Simon―someone with a bit of grit, proper fellow of his hands sort of thing. The niceties aren’t important; quick wits are. Nobody stupider than yourself, don’t be charitable. Look―hell―you are up for it, aren’t you? I don’t imagine it’ll actually be terribly dangerous as such, but you didn’t sign up for a gallivant through contested territory―herself’ll hamstring me for shoe-ribbons if I don’t get you back in one piece― 

―I’m in. There you go. Can you move it?

Ned wriggled and winced. ―Better. Nothing to be done for my knees, though.

―Be wanting the mounting block, gaffer?

―Piss off. See me in the knacker’s yard first. (Though if no-one were looking, and he could casually manoeuvre things without attracting attention, he probably _would_ ).

*

He smelled of violets. Not the queasy distillate that Alice Quickly thought lent a bit of class to darned sheets, but someone’s perfume. Mélisande flushed and her gorge grew tight. She was not of a jealous disposition, really: it was rather extraordinary that Nick had not done it before now, maybe he had, of course, but coming into her bed three nights on the trot with another woman’s scent on him argued for guilelessness of a high order, incompatible with a history of successful deception. She smiled despite herself: dear silly Nick. 

The prostitutes that the Quicklys allowed to work the Boar’s Head were discreet, for the most part kept women who’d lost or been turned off by their protectors. The streelers and drunkards of the previous regime were firmly discouraged. But Nick wasn’t paying for it, unless he had income of which Mélisande was ignorant, and that she thought improbable: he hadn’t the wit for cards or the nerve for dice and even other archers did not challenge Nick to sports involving projectiles. It was good for household economy that he was handsome enough to get himself seen to _gratis_ , of course, but a little bruising to her self-esteem. And the more she thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that any Eastcheap whore, even the flashier sort, could get her hands on―she remembered the hint of turnip beneath the intoxicating sweetness―it was fixed with orris root. A lady with _nostalgie de la boue_ , then. It was sort of what she was herself. Sort of. A frustrated tear leaked from her eye; she dug her nails into her knees. 

―No, she said aloud in English, ―goddamn it. 

She wasn’t Ghillebert de Lanferelle’s bastard, not any more, she was Mistress Hook, respectable wife to an English yeoman―well, nearly, Sir John would grant him the land, Sir John kept his promises―and it ripped at her heart to think of some fancy violet-scented bitch treating Nick, her Nick, as rough trade, and Nick too proud and passionate to see he was no more than a beast to her. Mélisande was proud too. She wouldn’t confront him. She hoped Alice Quickly hadn’t guessed. Alice’s sympathy would be unbearable. And then the enormity of it struck her. A gentlewoman came with gentlemen attached. The consequences of discovery were not to be contemplated. No, she thought, calm down―she was letting her thoughts run ahead of themselves―it had only been a few days―an exceptionally light-brained lady might take an archer to her bed for the transgressive novelty, it was scarcely unheard of, but she wasn’t likely to keep him there long, too much of a risk for scant return, even if that return were Nick’s full, soft lips on hers, his rawboned, cool hands on her hot skin, his stiffening prick jolting against her belly―feeling her eyes start to blur, Mélisande snatched up her work and set to it furiously.

The light was almost gone when Nick came in, but Mélisande was still sewing, hunched into the window seat to catch the fiery remnants of winter sun. He smelled of violets. She ignored him.

He touched her shoulder. ―Here, lass. We can still afford a dip or two, I hope. He put a spill into the fire ―you’ve let it get low, lovey. Aren’t you starved with cold? He lit candles, stoked and built the fire energetically.

―Look. He fished in his doublet lining and retrieved a folded square of parchment. 

― _Qu'est-ce que c'est?_

―’s a letter. See, that’s Sir John’s seal, the crowned lion there. Messenger didn’t know shite. I went to try and get Father Roger to read it. He was out, but the housekeeper had me in for a mug of beer, and she said Father Christopher came through on his way to France. I think it means I might be going back too. Can you read it?

― _Non, je peux lire un peu, mais je ne connais pas cette langue. C’est en anglais? ou latin?_

―Not Latin. He’d know I couldn’t read that.

― _Il te fait compliment. Il te prend pour un clerc._

―Aw, shut up. What am I going to do?

― _Un curé á St Clément?_

―Suppose. I hate asking those dirty buggers for favours.

― _Aha. Le gentilhomme qui séjourne dans notre ancienne chambre_.

―I―couldn’t―ask _him_. (This was no less than the entire truth, for Nick had visited Poins earlier that afternoon, meaning only to ask him to read the document, which had remained in the doublet that did not remain on Nick’s person.)

― _Pas lui. Son secrétaire._

―No!

― _Pourquoi? Il a l’air honnête―un sourire très beau―_

―Just no, all right. I’m not letting some little creep of a clerk cheat me. 

― _O, Nicholas! Tu es intraitable!_ She gathered her gown around her and stalked out.

*

Poins added _hire of bodyservants_ to his mental list of _things Matthew is too goddamned straight to be let near_ , a list growing long, uncomfortably, for he trusted him and he was merry among the ledgers that turned Poins’s brain to stirabout. In fact, he thought, there was no reason he could not entrust Matt with some of the minor intelligence work―for a man who retained a secretary, he was smudging altogether too many letters to altogether too important people in his own embarrassingly untutored hand. And to be fair, Bob Nightwork―he must be Dodgy Robin's grandson, _tempus fuckit fuckit fuckit_ (one of Hal's weaker efforts, that, why had it stuck?) and Matthew had also brought the dismaying news that Peto had succumbed to pneumonia; it was the brother he’d dealt with―anyway, Bob fitted the bill on every item―quickwitted, indefatigably cheerful, possessed of the cocky assurance of one who knows himself a dirtier fighter than most opponents would believe possible―except he was also a thoroughgoing, incorrigible little tart. Matthew, if he saw it at all, must have thought bothering about it was one of the niceties he’d been told not to bother about, while Bob thought one look had told him everything he needed to know about his new master. Subtlety was not going to cut it, not even with horseradish. At some point, Ned foresaw dismally, he was actually going to have to say it― _stop wasting your time and making a fool of yourself, I don’t touch boys, and I don’t touch the staff_ ―he only hoped he wouldn’t have his hands round Bob’s throat and his back against a wall at the time. 

―Bob, you must have it wrong, or someone’s having a laugh. They didn’t ask you to fetch a glasshammer as well, did they?

―I _don’t_ think. Was Francis gave me the message.

―Francis gave you the message _what_? Ned drawled.

―gave me the message, _Master Poins, sir _, Bob drawled back, giving just the surname a very passable Gloucestershire turn. Ned let it pass with a raised eyebrow. Frankly, he was impressed: a talent for mimicry allied to a well-developed sense of just how far to push it could be very handy indeed.__

―Oh, well. Francis missed his vocation. He should have been a cryptographer.

―What’s a cryp―

―You ask too many questions and your hose are a disgrace to decency and the dyer’s art. What colour do they call that? Mouldy medlar? Blasted peach? Haven’t you got another pair? 

―One, sir. 

―One for superfluity, eh? You are well got.

―They want mending even worse, sir.

―And worse you’ll no doubt mend them. You’ll have to do for now. Tell Francis to tell My Lady of Hell that I should be delighted to receive her, whoever the hell she is, and the kitchen that we shall have sack and anchovies, and, yes, eel, a nice bit of jellied eel. A cryptographer makes and breaks codes. Off you go.

The young woman didn’t look at all infernal, though that blue velvet had been chosen with someone else’s complexion in mind, and her finely-moulded face was puffy, like Margery’s had become about the time she quickened with their son Will. Something uncomfortable scratched at the base of Ned’s memory.

― _Madame de l’Enfer_ ―? Ned hauled out that final syllable about as far as it could go before she relented.

― _Mélisande de Lenferelle._

― _Ah. maintentant je comprends. Les anglais prononcent votre langue dans un manière absolument diabolique. Je ne fais pas exception. Edward Poins, à votre service._

He bowed over her hand, her nostrils flared. She looked puzzled for a moment, opened her mouth and closed it again. De Lenferelle―he knew the name―vicious reputation. 

― _Comment puis-je vous aider, madame?_

Her reply was lost in a thunderous thumping on the parlour door.

―Get it, Bob. Hook―my dear chap―what an expected―I mean, unexpected―

                                        ―Méli―you silly little cow―what in hell do you mean by―

                                                       ― _Tu le connais? Nicholas!_

― _Ah oui, nous avons bu un petit coup―il y a trois jours_ , isn’t that right, Master Hook?

―Come again?

Mélisande emitted a sort of hiccuping squeak. All three of them, aware to differing degrees that something had been disclosed, looked for a long moment at different corners of the room. (Bob smirked openly: two nights in this bloke’s service and he’d hit some sort of gossip bullseye. It _had_ to be a record.) But the instant passed, and they were left in a tacit, uncertain compact of dangerous calm.

Nick, knowing least, collected himself first. Poins saw him as he must look responding with revolting competence to one of those perpetual battlefield crises in arrow supply and couldn’t quite repress a lustful shudder. Nick explained the document and his wife handed it over. 

―You’ll have to ask Sir John to teach you your letters, Hook, he joshed awkwardly. Put some of those theories of his to the test.

Nick, whose ignorance of his exuberantly foul-mouthed general’s reputation as a pedagogue could only conceivably be surpassed by his uninterest in it, stared uncomprehendingly. Ned began to read, his small relief that at least the task gave him something to say drowning in a fast-filling pool of agitation. Nick looked feverish; Ned slowly recognised that unsteady glint was what passed in Nick for joy unparalleled; he felt a ridiculous pang of indignation that _he_ had not been able to make him glow like that. Mélisande looked like a limestone Virgin still scattered with the dust of her carving.

―I’ve business in Burgundy, Ned said. ―Got myself a place on one of the Earl of Dorset’s tubs―it rather depends on this weather which one, but it looks like we could be shipped together, Hook.

― _Je vous remercie, monsieur. Excusez-moi. Il faut que je retire_.

― _Bon soir, madame_. Ned stood and bowed.

Nick made no move. ―Take a cup with me, Poins. I’m going back to bloody beautiful bloody France. I mean, _we_ are.

Mélisande made a tiny, throaty noise, gathered her skirts around her and left at the stately pace only ever achieved by those frantically suppressing the urge to bolt. Ned shot her husband a furious, mute glare. He shouldn’t stoop, not even for those smothering lips, that miraculous musculature, that high, taut arse. Ned’s cock stirred. He felt himself about to say something noble, always a mistake.

―Help yourself. But I think you should follow your wife.

―Why?

― _Why_? Because you’re going back to bloody beautiful bloody France. 

―I’d rather stay with you.

Ned threw his head back in exasperation. ―Young Master Nightwork, remember you asked what _discretion_ meant?

―No, sir.

―Watch it, you little arsehole, you’ll cut yourself, Ned snapped. ―Scram.

Bob grimaced insolently at Nick as he strolled out, licking his upper right canine tooth. 

―Oh God, Nick, you don’t honestly think I―he― _not_ my style, as you know well. 

Nick glowered. ―I don’t know shit―

―Because, you oaf, _you’re_ my style―look. Go to her now. You can come back here after if you like.

―No, I can’t. If I go after her now I can’t come back, you know that.

Ned stared into the fire. He had made a show of disinterest. He was under no obligation to ensure the matrimonial harmony of the Hooks, a fairly fragile commodity by the looks of it anyway. It would be very agreeable to have Nick’s arse, thighs and cock at his disposal until the chaos of troop movements (amongst which pretty much anything could be hidden in plain view) dissipated into a semblance of order or his work overtook him, whichever came first. He liked what he had seen of Mistress Hook, but for someone who’d met her husband in the smoking ruins of Soissons and proceeded to follow the camp through Picardy, she was coming over a bit holy and meek. Nick probably had no gust for rape―though Ned had thought that of men before, and been wrong―but what on earth did she imagine he’d be at over there, that she could be bothered by this? Of course, the Church was hot against it―the preaching friars especially, which told you all you needed to know about friars even if you didn’t have Ned’s _applied_ science―and women were apt to take that spew seriously, but, honestly, Ned’s sparing her feelings wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference if Nick got the bloody shits, took a crossbow bolt in the neck, a poleaxe in the crotch, or worst of all, was captured. Then she’d be in the public rooms with the rest of those draggled hags, minutely touting for business under Alice Quickly’s aegis, all tight-lipped disapproval and fivepence-in-the-shilling commission. At least in Nell’s day you could have a laugh with them. He’d nearly had Doll Tearsheet’s eye out once with a throwing knife, well, _not_ a throwing knife, otherwise he would have hit the onion on her head foursquare and not made a tit of himself in front of a crowing Hal, he did _tell_ her it wasn’t weighted right, and she’d still goodnaturedly sucked him off for nothing after. He wouldn’t have taken her up on it, the blood-matted scalp and hair were nauseous, only Falstaff was there and Ned wanted him to see. What a _perfect_ little gobshite he’d been back then. But Doll was dead of pox and Nell Quickly was dead of palsy, Bardolph of a noose, that nithering fellow whose name he'd never caught, the one who'd had a bit of a pash on Nell, he hadn't come back either, now Peto too, Falstaff martyred to his own lusts, even Falstaff’s little page was dead, and Hal―Hal was dead of old age, and King Henry the Fifth of that name sat in his place.

―Yes, he found himself saying coolly, I do see how it is. Well, good luck, and God go w―Christ’s bones, are you all right?

Nick was staring, fixed- and filmy-eyed, at the bunches of dusty dried lavender strung along the beam. He crashed to his knees like an ox stumbling under the plough.

*

―Are you sure you don’t want me to call your―someone? No―I suppose not. Sit up and have a sip of this. There’s honey in it, but it’s still disgusting. Does you good in inverse proportion, you know.

―Poins, what’s your Christian name?

―Edward. Call me Ned. Didn’t I say?―I should’ve, excuse me.

―No. Funny to be so close to a bloke, as it were, and not, though.

―Enough names I’ve never known, or cared to. Imagine they felt the same.

―Don’t see how they could, actually. I don’t.

Balls. He’d rather not have that to deal with, but it wasn’t to be helped. He rubbed Nick’s shaven nape and kissed his brow, ugh, _clammy_ , and there was viscous spittle and the house’s ghastly sherris bubbling in the corners of his mouth. Ned pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, surreptitiously checked it for cleanliness. ―Here, wipe your face. I dare say you’ll get over it. 

―No, Nick said simply. ―I won’t.

―Up to you. You’ll can live out the rest of your days in lovelorn stupor for a bony-arsed, rheumaticky wine-mongering former mercenary, or you get over it, make your pile in plunder and prizes, get a bonny brood on that handsome French wife of yours and die in your bed lord of five hundred acres of Bedfordshire. Either’s fine by me.

―Is it really? 

―Is it what?

―Fine by you? 

―Manner of speaking. No, hang on to it. Look, what did you see? Your saints?

―No. This time it was different. The walls sort of―slid back, and―turned to gold, and the bunches of herbs up there were pearls, and blue gems. And there were angels―with wings like gulls, the sound they made. He shuddered. ―Not as nice as you’d think. They were all crowded round something, and when they parted there was a throne on a little platform covered with a purple carpet―and the gold was burning white hot, I couldn’t look straight at it, and there was―someone―sitting on the throne. I thought it was Our Lady―in a blue gown, and Our Lord dead across her lap, but I couldn’t see, it was too bright. And the angels were singing―sort of, it was really high-pitched―deafening, like when someone clatters your bascinet, but tuneful. Michael―that’s my brother, who was hanged, but he was innocent―was kneeling on the steps of the platform at her right hand, and Sarah―she was a Lollard girl, a virgin martyr, she _is_ , really, Ned―at her left, and I wanted to go over to him, but then I thought I’d go to her, because he has the king’s chantry, you know, and she only has Father Roger, and a voice said, very cold, ― _Don’t move_ , and it was the King’s voice, and all the dazzle was doused, and the music stopped; it was like daylight, though, so I knew it wasn’t over, and I saw it wasn’t Our Lady, it was _him_ , the scar―Nick traced it on his own face more accurately than Ned could have done himself―and it wasn’t Our Lord, neither, it was―it was―Nick shook his head. 

―Go on.

―It was you. Dead. And there were arrows all in you. Sorry. It sounds really daft when I say it aloud.

It did, too. Ned’s face flared. It was flattering, he conceded without self-struggle, to be so unhesitatingly chosen as the object of desires suppressed, unrecognised or―no, it was probably pushing it a bit to think that his gaunt, wrenched, thirty-seven-year-old person created unnatural appetites _ex nihilo_. He could even probably find something charming in infatuation, if it were short-lived. But not this. He didn’t want anything to do with visions. He certainly did not want to be _in_ anybody’s holy showings. Margery had a phase, after Will’s birth, of urgent extempore prayer for bodily sickness and revelation. She never saw anything that she saw fit to tell him about, and her next pregnancy silenced and made conventional the prayers, but it scared the shit clean out of him; not _worse_ than facing an arrow storm or joining a melée, but sustainedly and profoundly chilling in a way nothing on a battlefield could be. Once he had backed her into the large linen press, abstracted the keys hanging at her waist, locked the door on her, attended a shockingly longwinded guild meeting and returned to find her still obliviously praying. He only did it to see if he _could_ , hence the civic pastime rather than something more entertaining, but it was something he might have taken advantage of, if he and Margery had not already understood one another.

―Well, I _did_ ask, he said. He tried hopelessly to make light. ―Funny about the arrows. My sister says I was meant to be named for St. Edmund Martyr, you know, the one the heathens did in like that. But someone got it wrong―my mother died having me and she pretty much held the household together, so it was confusion all round, my father was a good soldier and useless at everything else―maimed at La Rochelle―and they reckoned one king-saint was as good as another and any was too good for me― 

―What if it’s not from God, Ned?

That was an unsettling thought, even to one of habitually impious disposition. Ned refrained from making the sign of the cross, hugged himself awkwardly instead. ―I―I don’t know. Don’t say the bit about Lollards to anyone else, anyway. That could be dangerous, these days.

―Maybe it’s a warning.

―Of what?

Nick gestured helplessly. ―Me―you―this.

―Well, if you think that, get you to confession, do your penance and sin no more. 

―I can’t. I can’t repent of you.

―I repent of me every day. Just takes practice.

Nick grinned wanly. ―I suppose I better go and see if Méli is all right.

*

The first thing she’d felt was relief, that at least there would be no consequences from outraged husband, brother or father. The second was curiosity: she knew of course what the preachers said men did, and what men said the preachers did, and those to her mind cancelled one another out. She’d been around enough camps to see a bit of it there, but it had always seemed her an extension of the relentless, grinding bullying of military life, and she was proud Nick held himself aloof from it. Master Poins, with his sober velvets and fine wools, his severely fashionable haircut and oddly unfashionable beard, his ironic good manners and ready, quizzical smile, his loose-limbed way of sitting with legs crossed at the knee and ankle wedged behind his calf, his clean, manicured hands and expensive scent, seemed rather the model of a squire of dames than a shabby, smelly sodomite. Not that _she_ found him in the least attractive; he had probably been quite handsome once, but he was old, as old as her father at least, and he’d seen harder living. His hair was grey at the temples, deep vertical lines rose between his eyebrows, he had bags under his eyes, his cheeks were hollow, and she had seen the effort it cost him to spring gallantly to his feet from that folded posture, heard his knees click. Jealousy boiled, choking and bilious: how could Nick bring himself to?―how could he prefer? Unless―but of course―

And this was the unfortunate point Mélisande had reached in her cogitations when Nick returned.

―Méli. I’m―not sure what you think you saw there, but it’s not―

―it is not what I think? _Et comment sais-tu ce que je pense? Alors, régale-moi. Qu’est-ce que j’en pense-je?_

―What do you want me to say?

Yes, it was stupid. He was here now, and soon he’d be gone. Who cared? ― _Rien, rien. J’ai peur. Tu dois retourner à la guerre―_

―I’ll be all right. I came through it all before, didn’t I? Come here, sweeting.

― _Tu sens de lui. Des violettes. Très mignonnes, très chères._

―Oh, that. Well, it’s embarrassing, but just after you’d gone, I saw the saints―not quite the same as before―I sort of―fainted―not really, but, you know, stumbled―and he picked me up and dusted me off, as it were. Lent me a―he opened his hand to display a handkerchief with a curious device embroidered in one corner: a golden rope knot transfixed by a black dagger. ―I’d say that’s it. Bit sickly, isn’t it? 

If he had dropped it, or looked to lay it down somewhere, or twisted it awkwardly in his hand, she would have acquiesced in this feeble dissimulation. Even if he’d shoved it up his sleeve she might have sulkily said nothing, but he tucked it into the lining of his doublet, against his heart.

― _Tu as senti de lui depuis trois journées. Pourquoi, Nicholas? Ce vieil homme? Il te paye?_

He shoved her. Nothing like his full strength, but he meant to knock her down, and he did. He stared at her, stricken, and then stepped forward to hold her, as if someone else had done it.

―Get off me, you bastard ―fuck you, fuck him, filthy fuckers, buggers, cocksuckers, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck your arse, fuck his―a whole Eastcheap lexicon.

He walked past her and out.

*

Nick’s head ached, a gnawing, burrowing pain above his left eye. His skin prickled all over when he thought of Poins’s casual, affectionate dismissal. He saw now how he was supposed to have played it; making a debonairly apologetic exit in Mélisande’s wake, reassuring her, putting her to bed, _madame is indisposed_ , returning―if he wasn’t such a peasant clown he’d have his prick down Poins’s throat by now―he groaned aloud at the thought of it. Instead he'd been straightforward―a quality only considered a virtue in _the quality_ ―and his reward was to be standing on Eastcheap in the mizzle, rivulets of meltwater and oxblood eddying around his boots. He snapped his fingers for a link-boy.

―To be honest, sir, you’re standing outside the best one for half-a-mile. But that’s the way it goes sometimes, innit, sir? The commiseration was patently genuine, so Nick forebore upon his instinct to cuff for cheek.

The place the boy led him to was literally as well as metaphorically low; even hunched over, Nick managed to bark his scalp on an uneven lintel. He sat and gloomed over a quart of alleged strong ale that was obstinately refusing to perform its office.

―It is, isn’t it―Hook, Nick Hook?

―Nick looked up. He didn’t think he’d ever seen this man before. The front locks of his grey hair were drawn back into a pigtail, the rest curled to his shoulders. His face was weathered and scarred, odd, almost feline eyes, a long, rather aristocratic nose, jaw too full of discoloured but intact teeth, but somehow the unpromising parts made a coherent, forceful whole. He still had a young man’s physique, slender-waisted and sinewy; he stood with his legs planted wide apart, and sat the same way. Unquestionably a soldier, though too skinny to make an archer―

―Yes―that’s me―I? The man was well advanced on Nick in drunkenness, and oblivious to the query in his voice.

―You got out of that froggy shithole alive too. Good man, fair play. He signalled to a passing drawer and stuck two fingers up in the air. 

He was undemanding company, in a sense. He required nothing from his interlocutor but murmurs of agreement and the occasional more vociferous expression of indignation, and he bought his round readily enough. Nick could wallow in painful reverie and still follow the general drift of the soldier’s story. He’d returned from the wars―so, yes, France, though Nick still couldn’t place him―to find his old Dutch dead, and her relatives had cheated him of―something substantial, anyway, some property maybe?―there seemed to be a lot of foreigners involved―Nick had no idea where they fitted in―and he’d gone to claim what was his and been―

―most abominably used, like Ixion, I was.

―Mmm, nasty, aye.

―And then I go back, anyway, yesterday afternoon, with a couple of mates, peaceable Irene and her sisters, we were, as you might say, which as I wasn't going to claim more than my conjugal rights under law, and the bastard nephew must’ve been tipped off somehow because there’s a mob of the dirty arseholes waiting for us a street away, and we only three, like Leonidas I was, horseman, pass by and tell them in Sparta―

―Well, wouldn’t you be able to get them done for that―

―Except they were wearing vizards, weren’t they, like Melopmene a-marketing, but it was all fists and we were beating them back though they were three or four to each of us and then one little pillock drew on me―

He drew back the skirt of his cotehardie, displaying hose distorted by a bulk of wad and bandage, which might, in one of tolerably jaundiced mind, represent a creditable attempt on the big blood-vessel in his thigh.

―now, that was a new thing, attempted murder, that, and they scarpered―but the thing was, I knew him by his filthy breeches, as Euryclea knew Ulysses, arse half hanging out, sure as the moon, it was Jane Nightwork’s great-grandson. So―

―Queer name, that, Nightwork. Heard it once before, today.

―Not surprised, seeing as she was a queer one altogether, if you know what I mean. And it's hereditary. But anyway, I do some investigating this morning and don’t I find who little Bobby is doing his nightwork for now, as Ganymede did his for Jove? Go, on, be my Oedipus, three guesses.

―I’m not from round here, see―

― _Edward Poins._ I knew that’d get you. Heard of him, haven’t you? Flaming Dis, are you all right, mate? I know, this thin piss hardly ever goes down the _right_ way, does it? wouldn’t have tempted Tantalus, here―oy, Stockfish!―two more!―where was I?

―p-Poi―

―Oh, yeah, I could tell you a few things about Ned Poins, except you wouldn’t believe them, because nobody does any more. 

―Try me.

The man raised an eyebrow. ―Hm. That caught your interest, didn’t it? I won’t ask why, them that ask none don’t get told none, yeah? But I'd steer clear of Ned Poins if I were you. Fishier than Scylla's cunt, that one. Any road, you don’t have to be Argus exactly to see that he's doing all right these days. He married that money, nothing wrong with that, Uranus married Gaia. Tipped to be alderman for the Vintry when Doit drops off the perch, they say. But I remember when Ned Poins was the fellow who finagled the Prince of Wales into a highway robbery. I remember when Ned Poins was the fellow who finagled the Prince of Wales, _punctum_ , know what I mean, Patroclus and Achilles, Hephaestion and Alexander, Hercules, Lysander and such great men―

Nick swallowed hard and shivered. The headache, having receded somewhat, made a vengeful return. ―I get you.

―Doesn't bear thinking, does it, them two long scrawny-shanked streaks of piss tangled in a bed? Hydra wanting a Hercules, innit? Even princes need company, I suppose. Not my thing, mind, he added unhurriedly. ―Menelaus and Paris both to my Ellen, I was, rest her soul. Though I’ve known a few sound blokes who inclined to it―and a few more I wouldn’t mind seeing buggered, if you see what I mean―leek-breathing arseholes who should have their own leeks, _pedicabo_ , there’s a phrase―

 _Leaks_? What was he on about? Nick thought. Better not to ask.

―But Ned―Poins and the King?―robbery? I thought that was just―rumour―

―Well, his pipe got blown by Surmises, didn’t it? 

―Come again?

―Never mind. Well, Harry and Yedward―well, that’s a two-quart tale, that is, Herodotus and Hesiod together―proper history, with humorous conceits and all―

―’s all right. I’ve got all night.

*

Mélisande supposed Nick had gone to him, was spending the night with him. Well, good, let them. It was cold in the bed alone, but once she had established a pocket of warmth, she had room to shift and turn almost extravagantly, instead of having to wedge herself against Nick’s sprawled bulk to avoid being inched out altogether. Let Master Poins deal with that for once. She had more important things to think of, how she was going to provide for herself, for the child, until he came back. If he came back. She had enough silver to see herself, quietly and frugally, through her confinement. There were quite a lot of things she could sell, the blue gown, for one. It fit her rather well now, but it never had before, and wouldn’t again soon. There was a lot of velvet in it. She wouldn’t need so many clothes in summer. Did it ever get warm in England? Nick said it did, nothing was nicer than an English summer. Her father’s people―she would rather not, if even she could. Sir John―well, if Nick were killed―she tried, hardily, to keep it just words―if Nick were killed he’d be likelier to pay out a pension than most lords―and then it burst on her, _Nick killed, Nick dead_ , and she let the sobs rack through her. But it was not in her nature to weep for long even over realities, let alone fancies, and the tears soon ground to the occasional hiccuping halt, which was hard to distinguish from the perpetual indigestion and wind she suffered from these days. Alice said, shaking her head in gloomy delight, she should have quickened by now―the dreary old mare, how she followed Nick about, too, though imagine having to go to bed with _Ralph_ ―but it felt more like a fart she couldn’t pass―unless that odd sort of twitching that made her think of a limed bird―was that it? If there was only someone other than Alice to ask. If only she wasn’t alone. But she was alone, at least till the child came, and that would be more alone than ever. She had to shift for herself, and if there was no worse they could say of her than that she was a bastard and could turn her hand to a job of work, she’d cope.

Somewhere, bells rang. Not St Clement’s, and anyway, the sound was too distant and the hour far too late. Not the watch’s cracked clang, either, but a clear, melancholy pealing: not quite a melody, and the sweeter and sadder for it. It was a passing-bell, perhaps.

**Author's Note:**

> Cornwell doesn't specify where Nick Hook comes from. I've made it Cheshire, because of that county's tradition of archery, at its infamous height under Richard II. Though the county was Ricardian in sympathy in the conflicts of the first years of the century, the Lancastrian dynasty continued to recruit heavily from Cheshire. 
> 
> The historical Poyntz family were from Gloucestershire, as Falstaff acknowledges with his Tewkesbury mustard comment, and I've made Ned look a bit like his illustrious descendant [Nicholas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Nicholas_Poyntz_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg).
> 
> Shakespearean historical telescoping presents a problem for the timeline here. I assume unShakespeareanly that Henry IV's sickness discussed in 2H4, II, ii is not the king's final one, which allows me to posit that Poins and Hal haven't met for some years at the time this story is set, which is between December and January 1415/16 (new style, sort of, I messed that up, but it's scarcely the worst timeline crime). I've also handwaved away the Chorus's speech at the beginning of Act V of _Henry V_ and made Fluellen and Pistol's confrontation in V, i follow shortly on the action of Act IV.
> 
> With regard to historical accuracy, my policy is that if it exists in the 200 years between the histories' settings and Shakespeare's plays, it's fair game, except where it's fun to have people encountering things like hankies and playing cards for the first time. Poins's black outfit is from the future: that bourgeois fashion seems not to have kicked in until the mid-15th century, but once the thought that the erstwhile owner of Those Hose would tend to fastidiousness and sobriety of dress in middle age was thought, it could not be unthought. I've tried to represent some small variety of attitudes to sexuality, most of which are probably anachronistic, but Mélisande's stereotype of 'sodomites' as unkempt is attested by contemporary sources.
> 
> Research has not been done into the likelihood of the 15th century hospitality industry and military communications as presented here, because this is really just a bit of fun. The hints that Poins is Something In Intelligence are anachronistic and underworked, for which apologies. I'm sure there are many inadvertent anachronisms and inaccuracies owing simply to ignorance too.
> 
> The title is a transliteration of the Middle English word 'unstedefast', meaning 'unreliable', 'unfaithful'.


End file.
